Vehemence
by Fair-Ithil
Summary: The thunder gets closer and she’s drowning in a sea of gunpowder and steel...A job goes awry. PostBDM. Rayne Implied


**Disclaimer: I am a mere follower.**

**A/N: **Basic premise**: River and Jayne in a firefight when a job goes awry. **I've been playing with the idea for a while because it was intended to be a part of a longer story that never really took. Anyway, this is Rayne if you squint really hard under lays of 'maybe'. **River's PoV, Post BDM, aforementioned squinty Rayne**. Read, enjoy, let me know what you think.

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It is all the shades of a bruise, the storm around her.

Rolling clouds of grey and purple, drops of maroon and shadowed shades of crimson. And if she were at home she would hide in Serenity's belly and count the seconds that slipped by between each crash of thunder but here the lightening comes too quick and fills her nose with the scent of gun powder.

Betty slips from her fingers, an empty shell hollowed out by the storm that had swallowed them whole, and pain—like violet and burgundy wine, spills from her shoulder.

'Girl's hit!' He roars into the comm in his palm and she vague picks up Daddy's hurried words and mingled curses over the static.

'Get out of there _me shang!'_

'Well what the hell you think we doin' here Mal?'

His worry ripples through the air around them, as palpable the thunder, and she knows they won't last long at this rate.

Her head spins and she grits her teeth as she aims Bertha with her left arm and fires. An explosion of scarlet at the back of her eyes as another pain—white hot and silver—tears through her arm. Makes it useless, an attachment of shattered bone and tattered muscle, a limp deadweight at her side.

'_Gao yang zhong de gu yang!_ Girl stay the hell down.'Pulls her back, comm chucked to the side as he examines the wounds, face tight as his fingers press down, trying to create a dam in against the over abundance of red. She yelps and bites down, body bucking and twisting against pain. 'Steady there Girl, almost done.'

'Not your color.' She grinds out, eyeing stained hands and spoiled clothes, seeped in red, all her own now. He presses harder and there is a roar of thunder to their backs. 'They'll drown. Blue and red, steel—will cut them down to slippery bits that rain down in April.'

He doesn't say anything, though his jaw tightens and his touch is rougher still until the flood is stemmed, and Zoë's voice, clear and even echoes out the forgotten comm.

'We're almost there Jayne, just hold your ground.'

'Ya hear that girl? Almost done here. Now just stay the hell down. No more of them heroics all ya crazy folk seem so fond of. Them orders from Mal himself, _dong ma_, so stay. No more talkin' either, you just keep them thoughts to yourself.' He says it all with steel on the edge of his voice, hands quick and efficient as they load one of the remaining clips into Beth, hands steady even as her body shakes besides him.

The thunder gets closer and she's drowning in a sea of gunpowder and steel.

'Stay.' She says, frantic, hand curling on his forearm. 'Stay.'

'Yeah, that's right, just stay put. I'll hold them off.' He starts to rise, shakes her off, leaving marks that are her own second hand, looks at her. 'Stay.' He puts Linda in her palm, curls her fingers round the handle. There's only three bullets in the clip, won't much harm to others. But these are bad men; she hears the whispers in his head, black and white words. Bad men who wouldn't be nice to broken little girls.

'No.' She can feel it, ice cold and distant, shades of sharp blue that cut at her with all the force of a bullet. 'Who will count with her if you go?' but he doesn't hear. Too busy hoping Daddy will come and save the day again. Doesn't want to die with a crazy girl on his hands. Doesn't want to die.

He moves away, guns at the ready and stands and she hears each crash as he pulls the trigger—_thousand one, thousand two, thousand three, thousand four_. She feels his heart beat in her veins, feels the world ripple in response to the mayhem they create, feels it stir and bubble over in her skin even as he moves further into it.

_Thousand five, thousand six, thousand seven._

Then like a door slamming shut, he is gone, no more hurried whispers, no stead lines of black and white on which to balance. His mind is closed to hers, gone beneath the primal drive to survive, to put a bullet in his enemy before there's a bullet put in him.

Eyes closing—_can't look, can't look_—she tightens her grip on Linda. He will be mad at her. Simon will frown. Kaylee'll cry.

_Thousand seven, thousand eight…_

Still counting beneath her eyelids, she stands to meet the storm.

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**End**

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